“It’s been our wish for the past 20 years,” said Oseked. She said they need a proper facility to take care of these kids. “We don’t have a place for these kids to go to,” she said.
With the present office they have right now, an old Japanese building along Ngerbeched which it shares with the Division of Fish and Wildlife and Bureau of Archives, these kids will even have a hard time to even find them.
“We need to have a proper office so that kids know where to go to find us and learn what are the things that are available for them,” said Detective Margaret Martin.
Oseked added that the office has been around since the 1980s, and they have had a lot of successful programs in the past. They used to have a proper office during the past administrations, but when the new administration comes, they were moved to a new office, albeit a temporary one.
In 30 years that the division has been around, Martin said, the Juvenile Justice’s office should have been bigger, more functional.
“But look at our office, it looks like we’re just starting,” she said.
Some books are lined up on two shelves; musical instruments that looked like they’ve never been played in months are in one corner of the office; several personal computers are just accumulating dust on one table.
Martin said these are meant for the kids to borrow, play with and learn stuff on, but nobody uses them anymore. “Nobody comes here anymore,” she said. “They don’t even know where our office is located.”
The Juvenile Justice division comprises of only two woman-staff, Oseked and Martin. And they also do home visitations to investigate cases concerning juvenile abuse.
“We need somebody to man the phone when both of us are not around,”
Martin said. She added that they already told the higher office about their situations, “But they said we don’t have enough funds for that.”
According to Oseked, “They’re saying all this stuff about kids being our future, but they are neglecting the agency that is doing the hardest job to help these kids.”
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